


Living with weeds

by Cazaan (sailor_muffin)



Series: Concerning Witchers [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, as gen as the show, geralt is an awkward potato
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23312815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailor_muffin/pseuds/Cazaan
Summary: "He's a bard."
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Concerning Witchers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676500
Comments: 14
Kudos: 176





	Living with weeds

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote something. Then I saw the humongous mountain of good fanfiction this show has and decided not to post it.  
> But my depression is acting up and the apocalypse is coming so... enjoy?

“Soooo… “  
The man in front of him made a vague gesture.  
“What’s his story?”

It took Geralt a moment to grasp what he was talking about, since he had pointed towards a window left of them and Geralt had spent a very long second staring out of it, trying to understand why the man thought he knew anything about the guy currently vomiting on the porch.  
But, taking into consideration the, quite frankly, astonishing amount of alcohol they both consumed, Geralt came to the conclusion that he should widen his field of search until he would find a target that made more sense.

Aha.

Yeah, that was it.

Probably. Most likely.

“He’s a bard.”

Jaskier had been bafflingly confident entering the drinking contest, even though he had to weigh about half the amount of the other man (He forgot his name. Something with an M. Or an R.) and Geralt was a Witcher who drank poison for a living.

Right now, he was lounging face down on the table, snoring softly into the crook of his elbow, probably drooling all over himself.

“I know that. Is pretty obvious.”  
M or R threw him a look that was way too judgemental for a guy with a beard drenched in ale and currently swaying gently from side to side.  
“With the lute. And the clothes. And the… singing…”

Geralt shrugged, drowning the last bit in his mug, making a face at the lukewarm taste in his mouth.

There were a few seconds of silence, both of them just staring aimlessly into nothing, before the guy started again.

“What I mean is…”  
And then he reached over the table, poking the sleeping bard with his finger, brows furrowed in drunken confusion.  
“Does he DO anything?”

Geralt opened his mouth, only to snap it shut again.  
‘Trailing after me and singing about me,’ sounded idiotic, no matter how true it was.  
‘Pissing me off,’ would be fitting, too, but then the guy would probably ask why he hadn’t just left him bleeding somewhere in a ditch or just, you know, rode a bit faster.  
“Hm,” he said instead, staring into his empty mug.

Another longer pause.

“I mean…”  
The guy started again, with all the stubborn determination of the very drunk.  
“Does he have magic? Do you like… need him for something? Did you lose a bet?”

Very reasonable questions, all things considered.  
There was, of course, a perfectly plausible explanation for Jaskier’s presence. Very logical. And if Jaskier had still been conscious, he could no doubt recite a longwinded and overly complicated speech about keeping legends alive for future generations and the power of hope and bravery in the face of dark circumstances and whatnot.

“Hm.”  
Geralt gave the slumped over bard a poke of his own, which had about as much an impact on his state as the one before. Namely, none.  
“He’s just… there.”

“There?”

“Here. And there. Wherever I am. He is.”

Whatever hope he could have had that that was enough of an explanation was immediately crushed by the look of utter bewilderment that was thrown towards him.

It was Jaskier’s fault, really. He had attached himself to Geralt with such an air of matter-of-factness that he sometimes forgot that it was unusual.

It also clearly wasn’t fair because it hadn’t happened overnight.

When they had first met, Jaskier had simply thrown himself at him in stupid desperation, somehow convinced of the asinine idea of Geralt being his ticket for fame and fortune, or at least to being able to eat something that hadn’t been thrown at him in order to get him to leave. Geralt had met many idiots like this. He had met many idiots, period. Usually, they didn’t live very long, especially those as far down on the social ladder as Jaskier.

But, by some miracle, he had managed to keep his insides…, well, inside and strolled off, happily singing about their ‘narratively improved adventure’ and Geralt had been content to file the entire incident as a slightly bizarre, but ultimately forgettable interlude.

And then they kept running into each other. And each time Jaskier greeted him with a wide smile, chatting cheerfully about something or other, pestering him about stories and ‘details’ and then usually hanging around a few days. Or weeks.

Until one time he just didn’t leave anymore.  
And that was that.

“Does he pay you? Do you pay him? Is it like…? A pay… thing? He tells everyone how great you are and you make sure he doesn’t accidentally crack his head open stumbling over his own feet?”

Geralt shrugged. He couldn’t deny that Jaskier literally singing his praises to anyone willing (and some unwilling) to listen had made at least some impact on the general public.  
The mere fact that he was currently sitting here, getting drunk with the guy who had paid him to get rid of what had been killing his livestock instead of being more or less thrown out immediately after, followed by suspicious stares and whispered accusations of him being the reason the drowners had been there in the first place, was pretty astonishing. They were even having a reasonably pleasant conversation. About… 

What were they talking about?

Jaskier mumbled a bit, snuffling and burrowing deeper into his chemise.

Right.

“People are less afraid of me when they see that I haven’t killed someone as objectively annoying as him.”

M or R chuckled in response and Geralt felt his own mouth twitch into a smile. They lapsed into an easy silence, the now nearly empty inn a pleasant backdrop despite the smell and the grumbling barmaid muttering curses under her breath while attempting to clean up the staggering number of empty tankards and dirty plates.

The entire village had been cramped in here earlier, celebrating and drinking and laughing along as Jaskier told the story of how Geralt had killed the drowners again and again, until it had barely any resemblance to the truth anymore. And while Geralt had never once dared to let loose the breath he always held when he was in places like this, knowing the mood could sour at any moment for the smallest of reasons, it had been… well, kind of nice. Uncomfortable and strange but… nice.  
To have people be happy about his presence. No one was ever happy to see him.

Except Jaskier. Who was always, always happy to see him.  
Who never got discouraged from trailing after Geralt, no matter how dismissive and downright hostile he behaved towards him.  
Who kept bouncing back from everything that was thrown at him, seemingly endlessly eager to accompany him to the next dangerous, monster-filled place.  
Who treated every situation they got in like an heroic and romantic adventure, even if it was just spending days trudging through a disgusting swamp, searching for something with large claws and a larger appetite for human flesh.

(Oh, he complained. A lot. Downright whined for hours and hours but whenever Geralt snapped at him that he could just leave him the fuck alone and make this easier for both of them he reacted as if what he had suggested was absolutely out of the question and why would he even say that? Who would quit in the middle of an adventure? There are no songs about ‘And then he left because his feet hadn’t been dry for a week’!)

Maybe it was a bard-thing. Geralt didn’t have a lot of experiences with bards.

Correction: He did have some experiences with bards. From afar. He had seen them. In inns. On festivals. Whenever there were large crowds that were hungry for entertainment. But they normally didn’t talk to him. Or, when they did, they usually gave up pretty quickly when they realized that they wouldn’t get anything out of him except grunts and glowering stares. Nothing to see here, just a Witcher who wants to be left alone.

(It was a balancing act, of course. But one he had perfected over the years. Be threatening enough to discourage anyone to strike up a conversation, but not so threatening that the public decided you were something they had to actively get rid of.  
‘A wandering guard dog everyone hopes doesn’t have rabies,’ an old woman had called him once, decades ago, milky blue eyes fixed on his pendant and that had been one of the nicer descriptions he had heard about himself.)

So, no, not a bard-thing.

A Jaskier-thing.

Idly, Geralt wondered what had made him like this, this aggressively optimistic, this wilfully naïve, this confusingly sure that every woman he met was the most divine creature on this earth, worthy of bouts of clumsy poetry and potential death by husband or brother or son.

It couldn’t just be ignorance anymore, not after all this time. Jaskier wasn’t delusional. He just… liked to live in a world of stories. And if they didn’t exist, he just made them up. But he still knew what was real and what wasn’t. He still ducked out of the way when something came at him snapping its teeth and didn’t try to do anything heroic. He still backed off when a situation got violent. Still counted his losses when a woman made it clear she didn’t want any of his advances. He had still managed surviving up to the ripe old age of…

How old was he, anyway?

Twenty? Thirty?

‘Jaskier’ was probably not his real name.

Where did he even come from?

He had probably told him. Judging by the sheer amount of things he sprouted on daily basis, statistically, he must have told him his entire life story several times. But listening to that constant stream of words was impossible.

(He had tried, once. Made it a point of listening, actually listening to Jaskier’s happy babbling. He gave up about half an hour in. Not even because it was too boring or annoying. Simply listening to anyone about anything for that long was fucking exhausting.)

“I think he likes me,”  
Geralt mumbled to no one in particular.

“Like… like?”  
The man in front of him made a pretty unmistakeable gesture.

“Nooooo…”  
Geralt drawled slowly, shaking his head, the thought as amusing as it was mildly horrifying.  
“I think… he just… actually likes being around me.”

Which was even weirder. Because that would have been at least something to explain his insistence of ‘being friends’.

And while Geralt knew fuckall about music and poetry and all of that, Jaskier wasn’t… bad.  
Probably. His rhymes were passable at best and bafflingly awful at worst, but his melodies were catchy enough and he did have a nice voice. Geralt had definitely heard worse. There had to be at least some alternatives.

And what had Geralt to offer? Mortal danger and monosyllabic grunts and endlessly trudging along unruly terrain. Sooner or later, he HAD to get sick of it.

Jaskier liked good wine and pretty girls and silky clothes and crowds of people. He loved to entertain, loved having a room hanging on his words and songs, he was loud and constantly getting himself into trouble and positively starving for attention, stopping just short of waving his arms and yelling at everyone he encountered: ‘LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!’

And Geralt liked… to be left alone, mostly.  
He liked Roach, because she didn’t expect anything from him. She was patient and nonjudgemental and he never had the feeling that she would eventually leave because he wasn’t what she wanted in life. That there had been so many things wrong between them, but she had been tolerating it, hoping he would change, only to one day find out that that would never happen and so she would leave, she would go away and that would be for the best, because, come on, what the hell did they have in common anyway…

“You all right there, Witcher?”

Was he? Yeah, probably.  
He had gotten used to Jaskier hanging around, he’ll get used to him not hanging around, eventually.  
“What’s your name?”

“Um… Dregos.”  
Not an M or R after all. Suddenly, Geralt was very glad he had asked. Today, he had helped a man called Dregos and gotten drunk with him. Something to remember. And eventually, he will forget. And that was all right, too.

“We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Dregos nodded, scratching his beard, looking down at the table.  
“Yeah, probably for the best. No offence.”

“None taken.”  
Geralt was already half dragging and half carrying Jaskier out of his seat, making his way towards the rickety stairs leading up to the tiny, dusty room they had rented for the night.

“You take care, Witcher. Not a bad sort at all, you!”  
He heard Dregos shouting after him, drunken and unsure and yeah, it was high time they left.

When the door fell shut after them, Geralt felt like he could breathe, finally breathe again.

“Urgh,” moaned Jaskier against his shoulder. Geralt gave him a push towards his side of the room, where he fell on the bed, face down and feet still on the floor, grumbling something unintelligible into the scratchy sheets.

“I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”  
The words were out before Geralt could properly examine them.

“’course you will. ‘m a delight,” came the muffled reply.

“How much did you hear?”

The only answer was a deep snore.

Geralt shrugged and smiled and waited for the sunrise.


End file.
